Following White Coat Waste Project’s viral Beaglegate campaign, Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Greg Steube (R-FL) and others have joined forces to introduce the Preventing Animal Abuse and Waste (PAAW) Act. The bill is the first ever introduced by Congress to prohibit the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from spending tax dollars to conduct or fund experiments that cause pain or distress to thousands of cats and dogs.
Here’s why that’s important: The NIH funds more cruel and unnecessary experimentation on pets than any other federal agency and taxpayers have little to show for it except piles of dead animals and mounting national debt.
As just one example: In 2021, WCW’s groundbreaking #BeagleGate campaign exposed how Dr. Fauci’s NIH division gave experimenters $424,445 of taxpayer funds to infest 28 healthy beagle puppies with hungry, disease-infested black flies for vaccine tests.
A group of the defenseless beagles – whom experimenters callously named after popular musicians and TV show characters, including Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Bon Jovi, and Monica, Phoebe, and Rachel from “Friends” – “vocalized in pain” during the tests, according to public records obtained by WCW.
The first set of beagle puppies was shipped to the Fauci-funded lab at the University of Georgia when they were just 6 months old. The puppies spent their lives in a lab, and most of their lives in pain. They were then killed before their second birthdays. A second group of 14 male puppies met the same cruel fate, according to the documents.
Read: WCW Spotlights Biden’s Efforts To Renege On Trump’s Pledge To Quit Animal Testing At EPA
After being feasted on by the flies, some of the dogs would suffer from the resulting infections for up to three months before white coats killed them and collected their blood, according to public records obtained by WCW.
The documents also reveal that the painful and expensive experiments were utterly unnecessary, as the experimental drug involved already had been forced upon numerous other species, including gerbils, mice, and primates. The Food and Drug Administration is even on the record clarifying that, “The FDA does not mandate that human drugs be studied in dogs.” Yet, the NIH wasted our money and these puppies’ lives on the senseless tests.
Appalled by the cruelty and the carnage uncovered in the WCW exposé, 15 members of Congress, including Reps. Steube, Brian Mast (R-FL), and Bill Posey (R-FL) demanded answers from the NIH — noting they were troubled about the “expensive, deadly and apparently unnecessary” tests.
Troublingly, public records obtained by WCW reveal that these cruel NIH-funded experiments that fed puppies to disease-infested flies are still ongoing and receiving more taxpayer dollars.
The NIH needs to be held accountable for the wasteful and cruel spending of taxpayer money on these deadly and unnecessary dog experiments. Congress just enacted historic WCW-backed legislation to defund and eliminate all testing on dogs, cats, and primates at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The newly-introduced PAAW Act would do the same at NIH.
When it comes to painful and unnecessary dog and cat testing, wasteful NIH spending is the problem, and the PAAW Act is the solution. Stop the money. Stop the madness!
Justin Goodman is the Senior Vice President at government watchdog White Coat Waste Project.
Help support the Tampa Free Press by making any small donation by clicking here.
Android Users, Click To Download The Tampa Free Press App And Never Miss A Story. Follow Us On Facebook and Twitter. Sign up for our free newsletter.